Marigold: "Yum Cha"
Top 5 Page for this destinationChinatown Restaurants Tip by cjg1

Marigold is a popular place in the heart of Chinatown. Our first time here was during a visit in 2010. Our friend Jackie loves this place and decided to take us here for a farewell lunch. We arrived early at 10:30am since we were told the place gets jammed by 11am with a long wait for a table. We arrived to an already packed restaurant but with tables available. We were seated at a nice round table and not too far from the kitchen (which turned out to be a good thing since the food carts hit out table first).

The deal here is that you can order off the menu or pick dishes off of rolling carts that pass by your table. When you select a dish you table card is stamped to indicate what you chose and is tallied up later for your bill. Since we were so close to the kitchen we had first crack at the carts of steaming hot food rolling out. There is so much to choose from: noodles, wontons, dumplings, chicken, pork, soups, desserts, sticky rice, seafood, vegetables....it gets rather hard to decide.

We chose a variety of items from pork stuffed dumplings, fried tofu, spring rolls, seafood dumplings, noodles and veggies, meatballs, broccoli with soy sauce and a few others that escape my memory. This wasn?t just a meal; it was an experience and an adventure. I loved the food and the craziness of all the hungry patrons.

We recently returned in 2012 twice to the same delcicious food in a bustle of activity. We enjoyed a good lunch here before heading of to the Wine Festival and some Cricket. We had a farewell lunch here by ourself before heading out of town to savor some more delicious food before heading back to NY.

Favorite Dish: There wasn't a thing I didn't love. In particular I love the pork buns, the salt and peper soft shell crab and the slimey noodles.

My wife adores their Mango pudding. I'm not a mango fan so she can keep it all for herself.